Darjeeling

I've been fascinated and bothered by the title of Wes Anderson's movie DARJEELING EXPRESS. On the one hand, I've been to Darjeeling and found it a fascinating little city - or "hill town". I was curious to see the movie because I'd like to see pictures of the place. On the other hand, I know there cannot be a train called the "Darjeeling Express." The only rails to Darjeeling are narrow gauge and the train that goes from the low lands up to mile-plus-high Darjeeling has only a few cars which are open. It is locally called "the toy train" and runs sporadically, if at all.

So it was a toss up yesterday, I'd go see whichever of about four movies I'm interested in, was about to play at the time I arrived at the multiplex. It was DARJEELING EXPRESS. It never got to Darjeeling. I enjoyed the "buddy" story of three brothers and the typically American premise that they would have a spiritual experience just by going to India. [Ha!] But Adrien Brody is beautiful to watch and the rest of the cast were fine and the story sometimes amusing. Though I didn't see a bit of Darjeeling, there was a scene of a funeral in a poor little town among dessert-y landscape that was extremely touching. The whole village gathered to go to the river to cremate the dead little boy. Everyone wore white [the funeral color in India], and they went on wagons pulled by their tractors and a donkey or two and a camel -- all were improbably decked with white flowers but never mind ... there was solmenity and the sense of a rural village where people dealt with life and death seriously and with that ceremonial beauty that was very touching in so many places in India. The scene was such a wonderful contrast to the rich boys without real direction in their lives, to me it was the heart of the movie.

With Darjeeling on my mind, I've spent the last 24 hours or so feeling happy that I've been able to see places like India. I love having the storehouse of visual memories -- e.g., a troop of Hanuman monkies dashing across Chowrasti square, and people lined up just looking at the panorama of Katechenjenga and beyond her, looking smaller in the distance, Everest, just after dawn when the clouds were not gone but nestling in the valleys below us. There was a boy brushing his teeth, sqautting beside the gutter outside the front door of his house. And the evening drive up to Darjeeling during Dawali festival when every little hut along the way or in the valleys was outlined in candles in little jars...there were snow leopards in the zoo and the mounteering institute with a memorial Tenzing Norgay who was with Hillary on Everest. I would like to go back to Darjeeling ... but I doubt I will. I've got those and many other pictures in my head.

One project is not enough

I am very happy to borrow other people's ideas. I will make them mine. This very much applies to quilting. As I showed in yesterday's post, I'll use an '87 design I found. My background fabric is black with a tiny red streak and the ribbons will be many shades of reds. Here's another pattern from Quilters Newsletter, this one from June 2000 designed by Elizabeth T. Miller [I believe in crediting designers even if I'm going to change the design -- I don't know if I'll do the border, probably not like hers]. Mine will not be red, as I'm using red in the other project, I'll dig into a different color of my stash, blue or maybe brown.

I'm inspired by someone who did a show-and-tell at a guild meeting last spring. Hers was a one-patch quilt that she had hand sewn at meetings and other qulet moments. I used to take needlepoint to meetings back when I was a "meeting lady.' I still like needlepoint but I'd rather make a quilt. However I didn't want to do a one patch design that I could sew on a machine much faster. I wanted to do something that I might not do otherwise, either a baby blocks or a drunkard's path, both of which need careful matching. I leaned toward the latter and when I saw this design I knew I'd found my project. I've made templates and all I have to do is cut out several for a start. Add some pins, a needle, thread, thimble and thread cutter to a little ziplock baggie -- a size I can carry in my purse. And I'm all set. It will take several months to do enough squares for the quilt but that's prefectly all right.

I especially love the scrappiness of this design. In fact, I can't really get over thinking that a "real" quilt is made of scrraps - even if those are in the form of fat quarters and cuttings from other quilts rather than true scraps. I love that so many designs and shades of a color can meld together harmoniously ... like a crowd of people at a cultural event -- all different kinds of people, dressed all kinds of ways, speaking different languages. But all harmoniously enjoying something together.

Starting or Finishing

The last day or two, and into the weekend, I'll be starting a couple projects and finishing, I hope -- no, I KNOW -- three projects. One is the much written about jacket. I keep adding little beads, and I think maybe I'm crazy because who is going to notice those tiny embellishments against the headlight-like big shiny buttons? Me, that's who. I just wanted to put them there. Now all I need is the actual buttons that will close it and I have them. Sewing them on will take, tops, two minutes. Then -- viola! Done. The other projects are two charity quilts for the Empire Guild, one was finished this morning when I hand sewed the binding and wrote on the label. The other is literally under the sewing machine foot where I left it when I stopped quilting and went in to work. It will be finished tomorrow.


What am I starting? Two quilts, one a relatively simple paper pieced one. The picture is from Quilters Newsletter Magazine, July-August, 1987. The design is by Joan Basore. I've been keeping copies of the magazines for over about 20 years and I'm trying to give away all the ones that aren't especially precious but before I donate them, I go through quickly and see if there is some quilt patterns that really intrigues me. This was one such -- although I'm doing a dark background with a red ribbon design across it. I turned it into a paper pieced ddesign -- relatively simple to make a diagram and so much easier to sew than cutting out all the pieces just so. I don't think I'll even do a complex design of many pieces again without it being paper pieced.

Just a couple photos

Yesterday blogger only let me upload these pictures but it didn't let me write anything. [Who knows?? The Gremlin knows.] Anyway, I recently took a role of film photos for a Swap-bot exchange and I was pleased to get these pictures. The first one is, probably most people can tell, some seaweed floating over the pebbles in shallow, clear water. It's a kind of image that can inspire an art quilt .. and maybe it will. I've been pondering how to get the wateriness, the transparency using netting or something very sheer... I'll keep pondering and something may come to mind.
The second picture, which could have been a little sharper just pleases me. It's a few of the little brown birds that are crumb moochers in the park. I guess they're sparrows, but I am so ignorant of LBBs I don't really know. Sunday was incredibly beautiful so I had a nice long walk in Central Park [where I wanted photos and got them plentifully]. I had a coffee and cookie at the terrace along side the toy sailboat basin. As soon as I sat down half a dozen LBBs flutter around my feet. They're fat little things, definitely not going hungry. But they're cute and of course I broke off a few crumbs. More LBBs appeared, of course. Some sat on the low cast iron railing that was right in front of me -- these are three of them.

Charity Quilts

It sounds like a cliche to say that the pleasure is in the making rather than having when finished. But I truly feel that way about most of my quilts. I have no ego invested, just the joy of using fabrics in a variety of colors and making designs Once they are done I sometimes forget them almost entirely. So giving quilts away is a pleasure too. These two quilts, from the Carol Doak "Star Quartet" series have a certain amount of purple and so I thought they were appropriate for the prostate cancer charity request made by an Empire Quilter's Guild member who poitned out that "purple is their color." [This branding of all causes is a tad silly, it's monkye see, monkey do.] But I am about to leave a email for the woman who is collectiing contributions who happens to leave only a few blocks away, and we'll arrange for her to get these two quilts. Also this third one.

The woman who requested donations for prostate cancer patients said her grandmother had died of the disease. It is one of the nastier cancers. It is not often curable but, of course, patients are often put through miserable courses of chemotherapy all for a few more weeks of life. So if a few bright colored quilts will give a little warmth and a little cheer -- good. I am happy to see the quilts going to such a cause.

Nice clerks at the P.O.

I have done my share of whining and bitching about the working and workers of the US Post Office. So it's time to say something about the two fine ladies who spend five or ten minutes this morning helping me save about $4.00 in postage. There were very few customers first thing in the morning. I had a Priority Mail package to mail to daughter Leslie in California. "If it were in the flat fee box it would be about $4.00 less," the clerk told me. "Oh, I didn't know the boxes were different." I said. "Yes, it has to say flat fee." She produced the proper box of what seemed to be the same size. I was about to move away to the desk to unpack and change boxes when she said "Maybe you can slip it inside." But, no. Neither of us could quite make it fit. Then another clerk appeared, "sure you can" she said and did shove my box inside the flat fee box! Nice. But then I said, "Oh-oh, the address" ... so we had to take it out, which took both of us -- her holding and me tugging. I got the address copied on the new box and shoved the old one back but by then the new box was getting a bit torn at seams so the second clerk began a major taping operation with the priority tape. I have noticed that the P.O. clerks LOVE that tape!

Done? Now quite. The first clerk noticed that somehow I had written my return zip code on the same horitzonal as Leslie's zip code and she thought the automatic zip code reading machine might chose the wrong zip code. So she gave me a label to fill out and paste one. All this effort to save a customer [moi] approximately $4.00 ... I left feeling very kindly toward those two kind and helpful women. I hope their colleagues along the process are equally caring and competent.

ZORRO, Isabel Allende

This blog is nothing if not ecclectic -- from the Dalai La, which was in the magic realism genre. Other books were more straight forward, her book on erotica was full of prescriptions and not very erotic. But I respect her work and follow it's changes. A few weeks ago Barnes & Noble had a table of paperbacks near the door [unmissable] with a big sign saying buy two, get one free. Too tempting. Among the three I bought was ZORRO by Allende, which I had not been aware she wrote. The last two evenings I've plunge ahead toward the end, both eager to how she would solve plot problems and a eager to get done because I had grown tired of the perfect swashbuckler, the young man who was fashioning himself as Zorro by becoming superlative at all the needed skills, sword play, acrobatics, use of a bullwhip, riding, telepathy with his Native American "milk brother", slight of hand that let him win at cards without getting caught, etc., etc..

Allende wove in lots of California and Sp;anish history, rather glossily added Caribbean and New Orleans, ocean travel -- it got to be too much for my taste, But never boring and once caught up in lives of charcteres the human need to know how a story is resolved assets it self and the book has to be pretty bad -- i.e., so transparent that the characters are too shallow to support suspense. So it was a romantic, swashbuckling read. I had read nothing, really about the very early days of the Spanish in California, so that was new and interesting. But most of the read was not new and often exaggeratedly romantic so that I became impatient. Now I must turn to something with more substance. Swashbucklers are not for me.

Congressional Gold Medal to Dalai Lama

We've turned some sort of corner. Bush ignored the fury of the Chinese and gave the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama. It's all symbolic but I take it as an encouraging symbol. For years officials would not even meet with His Holiness because everyone was quaking and quivering least the Chinese not want to let us make use of their cheap labor and not let us sell stuff to the needy masses. Well, a few things have changed -- this is my observation, not something I've read in any one place -- but now the capitalists have seen that the Chinese do not know the meaning of intellectual property. They happily rip off every American consumer goody from Nikes to Viagra, they are glad to sell us shoddy plastic toys and to cover them in bright lead-based paint. They are delighted to sell us tons of farm raised fish and seafood, all delightfully laced with mercury and various other toxic chemicals since clean waters are not known in the booming China. They don't care what kind of chemicals go into the toothpaste they sell and are busy copying the best golf clubs and tennis rackets in the cheapest materials, not to mention all the movies and music they gladly rip off even before they hit the American movie theatres.

I don't for an instant think the Bush administration cares that the Tibetan culture is being stamped out systematically and that the prisons are full of dissident lamas and nuns who are tortured [we know a thing or two about torture ourselves, don't we?] I don't for an instant think most people in Washington have a clue what Buddhism is about and I don't believe anyone feels any more compassion for the Tibetan cause than they do for the cause of the water-deprived Navajo and Hopis [no, we'll divert it to fake Venetian canals in Las Vegas and to the movie stars' pools in Los Angeles]. But, an arm or two got twisted and a little voice whispered in some important ears that an awful lot of American voters actually admire the Dalai Lama, actually think his stand for peace in the world is a extremely admireable. Yes, a pure heart and a right thiniking mind are a fine combination but sometimes it's the overt action that sends the message. And this message is the right one to send to China as some of their leaders get shuffled around. So much is wrong in the world; how wonderful when something is right!

Stuff

I'm thinking about stuff, I'm looking at stuff, I'm surroundded by stuff. Literally. I always am, really, but usually the stuff is discretely arranged, sometimes even artistically arranged. Right now it's higgily-piggily and just plain messy and ugly. You see, my apartment is two rooms, of equal size and the "other" one which is basically a bedroom but also a dining room [please don't ask] is being painted. I took everything off the walls, off the surfaces, off the floor if possible and even out of some of the bookscase shelves all to make it easier for the painter and a helper to move the larger pieces of furniture and to paint as efficiently as possible. And it's all piled in here. What a mess! What a lot of stuff!!

Some people live happily without stuff, or with very, very little. There is a Buddhist nun who lived in a cave for eleven years with almost nothing, she could probably count the items on her fingers. Many people who have more stuff than I do -- think of the famous Collier Brothers who have several emulators in this world. This stuff took me all weekend to carry in here and it will possibly take two wek weeks to rearrange I hope more efficiently and neater ... and a certain amount will go to the thrift store [a certain amount already has]

I see ads in the paper for a movie called, I think "What We Lost in the Fire." Which made me recall an incident from a trip I took. A woman from Los Angeles mentioned passingly that she and her husband lived in a suburb in the "fire zone," -- i.e., the part of L.A. were wildfires are frequent in the arid days of late summer. Toward the end of the trip when I suppose she had ascertained we were a sympathetic group, she produced a packet of photographs that she had lugged across the US and the Atlantic. They showed the devastation of the suburb in which the couple lived -- and it might have been Desden after the fire bombings.

What is odd is that this couple was extraordinarily lucky -- and perhaps she had survivors' guilt. They, like their neighbor, were told by public annnouncements, police cars driving through the area, to evaculate within the hour. They grabbed whatever and went to stay with relatives who lived only a few miles way. Other neighbors who did not have relatives nearby had to find room in motels. This couple stayed with relatives in comfort and with sympathetic hosts But for three days they had not idea what had happened to their home filled with a lifetime of stuff. When they returned they found that a few houses of many dozen, had somehow not been burned at all and theirs was among the untouched. They lost several thousand dollars worth of plantings in their garden but, unlike their neighbors who lost everything, they had all their stuff, perhaps a bit smoky but unharmed.

This woman seemed to have been deeply traumatized by nearly losing all her stuff. She needed to tell a dozen strangers verbally and pictorily what nearly happened, how lucky she was. But she didn't act lucky or grateful, she acted traumatized. Such is the power of stuff! ... I hope I am not my stuff! I think I could live without it although I would mourn lost photographs. I don't think I could live in a cave 11 months, let along 11 years without some stuff .. and yet people have survived horrible imprisonment without stuff ... because they had enough in their minds: poetry, music, sometimes, determination, sense of self. Something to contemplate ... forget the stuff cluttering up the room, is there substantive stuff in the mind, memory? Do I have any idea what I might do with my mind in a cave for 11 days ...?

Poetry Day, Marge Piercy

I've just finished reading Marge Piecy's 2006 [I assume her latest] book of poetry, "The Crooked Ineritance" which contains both pesonal and political poems -- although for her the political is always personal because she is a very committed writer. This is really vintage Piercy -- who I've been reading for at least 35 years. In fact about 35 years ago I was in a class of hers at the Indiana University Writers' Conference I remember her masses of black hair, her commitment to teaching something useful and, the one time we happened to lunch together, discovering that she is/was quite shy. Well, I was shy too so we said nothing of any consequence during lunch. One of the joys of finally maturing and "growing up" is that I am not shy any more - but sometimes diffifent when it seems appropriate. Having learned not to be shy has been a joyous accomplishment. That is one of the reasons I suppose I like the ending of her poem, "Many, many loves." And I hope it implies that she shares my joy at having overcome that childish trait.

Some can love a car -- I never could --
a book, a doll, a necklace or a ring.
Some can love a family and some can't.
Some -- the luckiest -- can love
themselves without narcissism
just saying, well, I am this, I could
do better now and probably I will.
,
The last line and a half should be italicized but blogger doesn't let me, perhaps because I'm a Mac user, italicize or bold in these posts which is why I do neither for the names of books, poems and other things that should be visually set apart.

And just the last few lines of one of her more political poems:

Evil our president says is everywhere
and obvious and must be invaded
mostly by working class kids
whose morality is dubious anyway
unless they die as heroes.

Marge Piercy has written a number of very readable, well plotted novels and several volumes of poety. I recommend her books, also essays, to anyone who likes the above mindset.

Spreading the word

Quite a few of my generation eschew the internet. Frankly I don't blame them, I've been a slow adopter. But it's changed some things very much for the better, even among my contemporaries. Since the last gathering of my high school class -- 50 years [oh god!] last summer, Lin has taken over as communication command controler. She sends out monthly email updates about class members about whom she has information. Three of the guys are fighting diseases, two successfully, relatively it seems, and one with waning energy. Other people are moving into new homes, and various smaller ailments are reported. This is amazing since many of us had very, very little contact over that long, long period of time. Busy living our various lives in various ways, some that were unexpected -- at least to me. [My own having surprised me as much as anyone else's surprised me.] But here we are now, holding our own and through the wonder of the internet, in more contact than over all that long stretch of time.
By the way, the picture at the top was the school we went to [we were only 56 graduates] And the lady is Lin, now of California but still a major force as she was back in high school. We met at age six, I clearly remember that first grade room!

I thought I'd return to writing of quilting today, this being an Empire Guild meeting day, but I took no pictures. I did talk with a woman who had an amazing quilted; patchwork jacket that makes mine look barely embellished. Mine wasn't quite finished enough to wear -- although the weather was perfect for wearing such a jacket. After seeing that other I am inspired to add quite a few beads, a few tonight and maybe some more tomorrow and each day until I feel satisfied. I'm feeling a big bogged until the men appear to paint my bedroom on Monday. That means tomorrow everything breakable must be moved, and everything on the walls [there's A LOT on the wall] must be removed, rugs taken up so furniture can be moved away into the middle of the room ... oh, bother! But it needs painting desperately so I'm biting the bullet and doing the necessway prep work. Then I can settle into life as usual, I hope, hope, hope! And get on with quite a few writing, sewing, reading projects I have in mind.

Nobel Prize to Al Gore, Doris Lessing

The first thing I heard this morning was that Al Gore was awarded the Noble Peace Prize. I feel almost a personal vindication since I was outraged when the Presidency was stolen from him and I've hated this administration and it's horrible, horrible war. How wonderful that Gore pulled up his socks and set about doing something of great importance -- telling the world about the emergency of global warming which so many ostriches in the current administration want to pretend isn't happening because they've got their heads -- shall we be polite and say the cliche instead of the vulgarity? -- in the sand. How wonderful to see that we have a man who has intelligency and vision and dedication to humanity! It seems the American political system cannot handle a man of principle but men of principle carry on -- Jimmy Carter was the first shining example of a political reject who proved to be a compasionate and even fearless leader after he lost an election. So worldwide recognition of this positive sort is a wonderful thing and makes me very happy.

An hour or two later I read that Doris Lessing, at 85+ is no longer impressed with awards. She says she has a full house or royal flush and that's nice ... sounds a bit liike a nice cuppa, ho-hummm. But feminists the world over have to be glad that she has been recognized even if it did take the committee a long, long time to get around to it. So a second cheer today!

Last Beach Weekend

l like the beach very much, but having grown up in the Midwest, I didn't see an ocean until I was 21. So it's not something in my deep memory bank. Usually i visit Rachel once a summer and enjoy the beaches on Cape Cod. In June after Cory's graduation, we managed a lovely stroll. I did not get back to the Cape all summer -- until last weekend. October is an iffy time; but it was perfect. We had a long walk at the edge of the slighly chilly water --- a few hearty souls were swimming and a great many were sitting on the beach sunning.

On the way up the coast only a few trees were partly touched with red. None were in full color although the papers say it was peak lave peeping week in Vermont and New Hampshire -- 50 to 100 miles further north can make a great difference. I'm happy to trade leaves for the beach. Plus there was a soccer game with Noah showing how very fast he can run! And his team got three goals to the other team's none. It was a wonderful afternoon sitting on a field surrounded by woods.

An autumnal reminder tried to keep me awake. The window three or four feet from my head as I slept was above the wooden patio. Over the patio is a large oak tree full of acorns which, every time a breeze blew, dropped on the wooden flooring with the sound of hail or small weapons firing. Actually, not a bad thing to keep one awake -- seasonal phoemena are to be celebrated, not complained about.

WaterFire

For some time I have heard about the Waterfire [or Firewater?] event in Providence, R.I. on their rconstructed downtown river/canal. I heard it was beautiful. Perhaps if I had seen a video I would have been able to imagine it but I did not so I was curious. Antoninette, who I met on my recent trip lives in Providence and wrote suggesting I come see it in October, the last month it will happen this year. I had not been to Cape Cod all summer either so I combined seeing Rachel and famly and then seeing Waterfire. I'm afraid the pictures give really no sense of what it is like. Antoninette had said it is like a street festival with food, performers, music and crowds Right in spae. I think we may have been there at the very best time. Rachel drove me to Providence because she had wanted to see it also. A. warned us the city would be extra crowded with people from a breast cancer run.
She found out a bit later that the breast cancer group were going to do a parade from the State House to the Waterfire bearing torches. Really by happenstance, trying to find the best vantage among a huge crowd, we were in a spot to see the parade which was not "a few" torches but 400? 500? 600? women marching holding torches and circling the main basin in which multiple fires were burning on the water -- burning very fiercely [dry wood possibly soaked in something else flammable] We saw torches in a very, very long procession come down the hill and then march around among the huge crowd as music was being played. It was a very numinous rite.

When they had all marched down and gone on. we wandered through the throngs, saw a spectacular fire juggler/eater, living statues, more fires further along the river, crowds of people at the food booths. It was, indeed, a festival. Then A. gave us a lovely liight supper before Rachel drove back to the Cape. [More about what may be the last lovely weekend of beach weather tomorrow] This morning A. showed me around that dignified and lovely little city -- full of wonderful houses from the turn of the century through the '50s in enormous variety ... her house, too, was wonderful. It reminds me that there is much to discover virtually beneath my nose, for I have gone through/past Providence many, many times in the last 40 or so years but really had not seen what it's like.

Degrees of Separation

I don't know whether it's too late for the last of the beach roses but I hope not. I know there will be many fat red rose hips. But I'll gladly let someone else pick and process them for tea. I'm taking a break for a couple of days on Cape Cod - it's warm and supposed to stay warm -- hurray! Then I'll have many, I hope, nice autumnal pictures. Somewhere I have a picture of beach roses but not at hand, sorry.

Today I spent much edge-of-the-mind time thinking about degrees of separation. Many people know John Guare's play, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, which I kept remembering. Today's job was transcribing an interview with a well known actress. She spoke of a long affair with a certain actor and of another, who I know to be a freind of the frist, as a good friend of hers. These two actors are people I have met, tho' only briefly, because they visited the psychiatrist I worked for some time ago. So that put me only three degrees away from this woman whose life I was learning about in some depth. For those who do not know the play -- or the movie made from it -- the premise is that everyone is connected to everyone else on earth by only "six degrees of separation" if you can find the connections. Figuring out degrees can be a pointless exercise ... so what if I'm three degrees from this woman?

I do not accept the premise about "anyone on earth" but it's too bad we can't all act as if it were true. We might then relalize that that all humans are more alike than diifferent, and gain some compassion for people who not at all, on the surface of our lives, like us. Thinking about yesterday's post, it makes me a bit queasy to think of being related to that comedian. Sometimes we can think about things perhaps a little more than makes us comfortable. But then who promised us comfort? And isn't it good to look at the uncomfortable now and then?

This is funny?

As I approach Old Fogey-dom, rants become necessary when I become aware of things my lack of television has protected me from seeing. Today's transcription job was 90 minutes of a so-callled comedian - a stand-up guy with, I take it, a considerable reputation and a certain following. I was immediately offended because he spent the first 30 minutes insulting almost every ethnic group, [making a certain amount of fun of the "youth" of his own group] Of course every topic was larded heavily with sexual references. I was offended especially for the gay community but then he got into politics and showed the usual caliber of old idiocies by saying a woman president is a bad idea because "every 18 days she'll go nuts." Using PMT is not offensive in itself, it's just dumb but when he apparently has never heard of menopause ... that's ignorance.

Ignorance was the foundation for all the humor -- plus calling every woman "bitch". Once he had attacked every one, I think, except Australian aborigines [probably only because he doesn't konw they exist] he based the rest of his schtick around sex -- as graphically acted out as a fully clothed person can, and going into permutations I thought were beyond what is talked about in public places. Now and then the guy offered some fairly sentimental platitude about how divorce is hard on kids or how you have to communicate in a relationship, but as soon as he got almost to something logical he veered into some kind of sexual rap. 80% of the so called humor in the 90 minutes was centered on the crotch; the rest was aggressiveness to everyone different than himself.

This is called "entertainment" and a room full of people were laughing [although I know they are cued well before a performance] but presumably people at home will watch this thinking they're being entertained. Over and over and over, whether it's "humor" or what passes for news or sitcoms, whenever I'm exposed to television I'm glad I have shelves of boooks to read and have chosen ones that were written by serious people attempting to pratice a craft that calls for skill, thought, emotion, rationality and, often, story telling ability -- that's what I call entertainment.